September 6, 2011

A newly recognized condition... or an old irritability with a name that helps irritable people feel less irritated by their own characteristic of being terribly irritated by other people?

Many people can be driven to distraction by certain small sounds that do not seem to bother others — gum chewing, footsteps, humming. But sufferers of misophonia... [are believed to have something that] is hard-wired, like right- or left-handedness, and is probably not an auditory disorder but a “physiological abnormality” that resides in brain structures activated by processed sound....

Misophonia (“dislike of sound”) is sometimes confused with hyperacusis, in which sound is perceived as abnormally loud or physically painful. But Dr. Johnson says they are not the same. “These people like sound, the louder the better,” she said of misophonia patients. “The sounds they object to are soft, hardly audible sounds.” One patient is driven crazy by her beloved dog licking its paws. Another can’t bear the pop of the plosive “p” in ordinary conversation.

95 comments:

I have experienced the opposite. There are certain people who speak who for some reason are just a pleasure to listen to. It is not what they are saying, it is something about the timbre of their voices that make it pleasurable to hear them speak. It wears off after a while, but I still occasionally get it (it happened far more often when I was younger).

I totally have this. Though a mild case if I compare myself to those in the article. Still... noises totally bother me and undermine my focus. Earplugs and fans are my friends and I can't study in the library. Too much rustling and movement and whispers.

Cell phones are my nemesis. They make every otherwise quiet spot a place to listen to someone else's uninteresting phone calls.

I lived in apartments for decades and could never get used to it, the issue being the near impossibility of ever living in a state of uninterrupted quiet. There was always something: footsteps above me or the faint sound of a voice carrying from the apartment next door or the thud of a closet door being closed or something being dropped or a squeaky floor. That's why owning my own modest unattached home is the greatest luxury imaginable

So that’s why my wife Paula reacts angrily when I tell her I put her precious pottery in perilous proximity to playful puppies. It’s not me she’s annoyed at, it’s those popping “Ps” and her misophonia. What a relief.

"There was always something: footsteps above me or the faint sound of a voice carrying from the apartment next door or the thud of a closet door being closed or something being dropped or a squeaky floor. That's why owning my own modest unattached home is the greatest luxury imaginable."

Ah, yes! It's been a long time since I've lived in an apt., but what I hated was hearing any music or TV through the walls, especially the thumping of the bass of the music that was otherwise inaudible.

The sense that some other person was inflicting his bad taste on me... that's what I hated.

(But I don't in any way think I have a disorder of any kind. It's a matter of temperament, which is part of human diversity.)

Ricpic, so true for me. And now that I'm back to living in an apartment in the city, surrounded mostly by just out of college graduate students, the irritations are near constant.

I'm trying to find my way to finding wisdom and growth by not letting it get to me, but it's hard work.

That unattached house sounds great, though it'd be unimaginably great on about forty acres.

What's interesting to me is that it's almost entirely people noise that gets to me. I love the sounds of birds, of wind in the trees, of a running stream, or any of the other innumerable more natural sounds.

Windchimes, however, drive me absolutely crazy. Ruin the sound of a good wind with random tinkling is absolutely baffling to me.

I also think it's temperament and diversity. When I get total quiet, my mind wanders in very creative directions, and I'm a much better writer and thinker.

So, I yearn for that wandering, but every random noise is like an arrow shot at my thought balloon, causing me to crash back down to earth.

I spend a lot of the day with earplugs in, but being so close to other apartments, sometimes the noise breaks through. I also have a pair of Etymotic MC5 earphones, which are like earplugs with speakers. Had the Er6i until I finally wore them out with use.

"There was always something: footsteps above me or the faint sound of a voice carrying from the apartment next door or the thud of a closet door being closed or something being dropped or a squeaky floor. That's why owning my own modest unattached home is the greatest luxury imaginable."

Ah, yes! It's been a long time since I've lived in an apt., but what I hated was hearing any music or TV through the walls, especially the thumping of the bass of the music that was otherwise inaudible.

The sense that some other person was inflicting his bad taste on me... that's what I hated.

(But I don't in any way think I have a disorder of any kind. It's a matter of temperament, which is part of human diversity.)

He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

While working, people talking distract me somewhat. (We work in cubicles.) Some voices are quite irritating. One woman's voice inspired me to buy headphones which I don't like to wear because I like to be able to hear someone sneaking up behind me.

For a while, one coworker had a computer mouse on which the wheel was quite loud. I thought he was chewing loudly for a long time.

With dozens of keyboards, quiet conversations, cursing under one's breath, people walking about (I find the sound of dragging hills slightly irritating), occasional earthquakes, etc, someone with misophonia would go crazy where I work.

From the article: “I don’t think 8- or 9-year-olds choose to wake up one morning and say, ‘Today my dad’s chewing is going to drive me insane,’ ” said Marsha Johnson, an audiologist in Portland, Ore., who runs an online forum for people with misophonia.

That is true. Every healthy 9-year-old wakes up every morning and says 'Today I will drive my dad insane.'

I am deeply offended by the bass that precedes a car blaring hiphop with all windows down. You can feel them coming before you can hear them and you can hear them many car lengths before they are abreast.

there is an antidote, however, and that is Johann Sebastian Bach, a cantata, any cantata, at full blast. It is like a whistle blast in the ears of a hiphop devotee.

The NPR had a book review last week about the subconscious mind's alertness to different stimuli.

In psychology, we studied a phenomena call an "orienting reflex," upon the hearing of a strange or unusual sound one would "orient" to that sound and try to identify its source. This was considered to be a survival mechanism too. It can be great fun to play with cats using sounds. Cats react to almost every little new sound.

Why is everything becoming pathological? Why can't we have fusspots and curmudgeons and wet blankets without their personalities becoming "physiological abnormalities"?

One noise that bothers me is the bass from my downstairs neighbor. He's a government-subsidized shut-in who spends ALL day, EVERY day playing World of Warcraft because he doesn't have to work, and with housing subsidies his family could offload him and make him someone else's problem. Namely, mine.

I also hate--hate, hate, hate--rattles and noises in my car's dashboard or doors. Rattling in other people's cars doesn't bother me, but if it's in mine it drives me absolutely batty, mostly because I paid good money for a new car and it's infuriating that it should develop rattles. But my current car has been perfectly quiet for 50,000 miles, and that makes me very happy.

mostly because I paid good money for a new car and it's infuriating that it should develop rattles.

A woman I worked with bought a new car that had a rattle that just wouldn't go away. After several months of unsuccessful attempts to fix it, they gave her a new, new car. They then tore the first car apart on found a glass pop bottle that had been stuck in a body panel by someone on the factory assembly line.

"...or an old irritability with a name that helps irritable people feel less irritated by their own characteristic of being terribly irritated by other people?"

If only that were true - I'd be very happy if merely giving it a name made me a less irritable person! I do like having a name for it - misophonia sounds much better than "mind weasels", which is my term for the condition.

After several months of unsuccessful attempts to fix it, they gave her a new, new car.

You know, with my first car that developed rattles, people kept telling me to bring it in as it was under warranty, but I thought it was such a trivial thing that it couldn't possibly be covered by warranty. But it is. And reading various car forums, I've found a LOT of people who did the same thing. And I've read a lot of people whose deciding factor in buying a car is whether it develops noises. I'm sure soon we'll have a misophonia advocacy group with its own consumer reports magazine: "Forget MPGs. Which car rattles least? We give our Top Ten. PLUS: How to make a fuss about clinking silverware without sounding trite."

I'm also irritated by Obama's whistled S's. During his speeches, I notice one, then wait for the next, then soon it's all I'm paying attention to. Which is a shame because I end up missing the substance of his speech. Oh wait.

I have both abnormalities..I hate the sound of my dog licking his balls, people eating loudly, and loud sounds like those reverse gear fucking beeping vehicles. UW vehicles have the loudest, ear piercing, beeping vehicles. I hate the beeps @ a gas pump. I believe I could live a good life deaf. I become less tolerant of noise every year.

I used to be annoyed and distracted by all sorts of sounds, many of which were quite common. That's not true anymore in my case. The change came when I rearranged my life to get rid of two situations that were really annoying me on a daily basis. Once that change was made, the rest of the stuff stopped being a problem.

The sound of certain types of crickets causes me pain. The back of my head feels the vibrations from their sounds. It's like a small vibrating drill and it hurts.

I like the silence, however, I do agree with Joanna. It really isn't silent.

My husband and I will sit in the house and read in silence with only the ruffling of pages and an occasional comment, laugh or reading aloud of a good passage. Often we will be cruising on the internet with just the little tippy typing sounds from our respective computers. Our normal background sounds are the birds and other sounds of nature and an occasional vehicle going by on the road to remind us that civilization still exists.

I can't stand the sound of constant television in the background. The inane yammering. If I want low soothing background sounds I'll play some instrumental or classical music.

Mostly I can tune out the sounds if I wish and not be irritated....except the damned crickets.

As much as I like Sarah Palin, I think she could use some vocal training and an expert at sound shaping/graphic equalization/tweaking her microphones/sound systems at speeches. Her voice, particularly when she is amping it up to get over crowd noise, has an uncomfortable quality to it.

Freeman, I'm w/ you on tv's. When I was a juvenile probation officer I would visit homes that seemed to always have the tv blaring. This was before remotes were standard. So, before I say down, I would calmly walk over and turn off the tv. Problem solved.

I have to admit chewing/slurping sounds drive me nuts. Also when people suck in air when they talk, when they do that smacking thing with their tongue. I get into an apoplectic rage at that point and want to stab my ears.

Even total silence can be very scary. The smallest sounds suddenly make you jump in terror. I hate sleeping alone in an empty house. All you hear throughout the night are the creaks of the floorboards settling and it's very spooky I tell you!

I live in the middle of the city. A trolley line and an above-ground subway station are right outside my bedroom window. I can sleep right through this noise - and sirens, car alarms, barking dogs, you name it. But the sound of gum cracking - especially when the chewer keeps her mouth closed to muffle it - sends me right around the bend. I've been this way since I was eight or nine, and was always told by my parents to "ignore it". These are sounds I CAN'T ignore. The description of rage, panic and fear are right on the money. I can't describe how much this "crankiness" has affected how I feel about myself. Knowing others are bothered by these same, small noises is an amazing relief.

"The autonomic nervous system itself is overactive, with anxiety and psychological stress manifested by over-sensitivity to stimuli."

Pogo, very interesting. I have a life-long struggle with anxiety/panic disorder and I've always wondered if it was somehow related to my sensitivity.

Without getting too personal, I have a condition that make me extraordinarily sensitive to most sensory stimulus. I've spent my life finding ways to cope with the problem, but it's not easy. I had great difficulty when I was a child because all television sets back then were CRTs, and I found their emitted frequency intensely painful. I have a similar issue with fluorescent lighting, which is one reason I'm so horrified about the ascendancy of the CFL. The refrigerator is also a challenge, because I find its frequency very loud and unpleasant. I live in a very noisy old building, right near an elevated subway; strangely, the clatter of the subway trains doesn't bother me too much (if the windows are closed), but the sound of a fridge is painful.

I survive in New York by wearing noise isolating headphones whenever I am outside. I actually hate doing it, because I hate the vulnerability of not being able to hear things, but it's unbearable without them.

It's not just sounds, I am also very sensitive to touch, light, smell and color. These sensitivities, however, don't generally cause me the pain that my auditory sensitivity does, and I've actually been able to use them to my advantage, as a visual artist and now as a perfumer.

comments like Pogo's is why I love hanging out around here. Well, comments like Pogo's mixed in with all the jokes, curmudgeonness, and whatnot.

ndspinelli, I'm with you on the backup beeps. I despise those. I really do not need to know that a truck 2 or 3 blocks away is backing up.

When I was in Germany, there was a truck that made more of a swish, swoosh sound, loud enough to warn anyone behind them, not loud enough to tell the whole neighborhood. We need those.

Because every time I hear the trash trucks on our block, which is a 3-4 step process involving as many as 3 different trucks, every day, all backing up, I get images of barbarian Europe, and wish it were socially acceptable to take a battle axe to the those.

Speaking of fight impulse... I blame my berserker forebears for passing on this tendency to rage at irritating beeps, honks, clanks, clatter, and small talk.

For me and how my synesthesia works, this can be an issue. It's not that there are stimuli that irritate or can irritate me, but more of how that sensory input translates itself to some other sense that I have to deal with. For example, I think we can all agree here that the sound of scratching on a chalk board more or less ranks right up there as one of the most unnerving sounds ever. Well, when I hear that sound, the two sensory translated offerings on get on top of it is basically what I call the taste of diarrhea and the smell of dried blood. Misophonia might be bad for some people but for me it's worse.

People who have hypersensitivity to stimuli often have a history of PTSD or anxiety disorder due to repeated traumas. This literally changes the structure of the brain, especially the regions associated with the cardinal symptoms of PTSD, such as physiological hyperarousal and emotional numbing, and bodily symptoms such as sensitivity to stimuli.

One can practice making that area more and more functional, with certain techniques, and make it be on more of the time than the FOFS. The effort is towards making the PFC the default system instead of the FOFS.

Let me count the ways -- whether it called Misophonia, Hyperacusis or even Tinnitus it all falls under the general term, Noise Anxiety.

I have my theory, having had to put up with teenagers -- that ear-blasting music has to be the primary cause. Having said that, old folks get Tinnitus simply by being old folks. Audiologists make a fortune selling hearing aids to solve a problem that is likely unsolvable.

For all other folks with Noise Anxiety, there is the cheap fix called ear plugs.

As the mother of an Aspie, I can tell you that this is entirely normal for a lot of Aspergers people. My son is a drum, violin, and trumpet player. The louder the music, the better for him. He is one loud kid. Small noises drive him over the bend. I had his hearing tested and it turns out that he has incredibly sensitive hearing. When I was a child I could hear the alarm system at the doors at one of the stores at our mall. I didn't lose that ability until I was in my teens. I tried living in the city and was miserable from the sounds, but living in the country is wonderful. It is the only way I can sleep- without all that city noise and electricity- even though I can sleep through my son practicing his music in the room right over mine. And I threaten physical violence to people who smack gum, chew with their mouths open, or slurp their soup. Nails on freaking chalkboard to me.

I suppose I'm the weird one in that none of the above mentioned noises bother me in the least. It helps having gone to an "open concept" high school where one was subject to the noises of several classrooms while attempting to concentrate.

I wonder if your hearing becomes more acute and sensitive ... as you get to start another year?

Who else but teachers would be alert to the sound of gum being chewed?

Did I ever sit at a school desk that didn't have a piece of gum pasted on the bottom?

As to teachers afflicted with misophonia ... can they go out on disability?

I'd think most teachers just end up really liking "their" kids ... And, then when school ends they hate to let go. (It's a big investment.)

At least the kids come in all excited. And, not just with new clothes. And, shoes. And, backpacks! Today's kids have cell phones. And, Laptops. (And, they Google the reputations they can find on line.) They're not depending on the school's "biographical data" either.

And, since I do think teachers have "special hearing" ... they're using it to connect to students. It's the opposite of a disease.

Love this thread. Your insights. My husband has this quirk...er...medical condition. I'm sensitive to it and pay attention to my sounds. I love the second comment @Fred4Pres, that said he may have the opposite, I'm with you. LOVE all sounds, weirder the better!

I can't stand the sound of a refrigerator running, crickets chirping, loud tv when I'm trying to sleep, snoring, dogs barking and many other noises. Had this problem since I was a little girl and I am now 61. It's been worse for 25 yrs now. Recently bought a new refrigerator and had to send it back. Using my old one instead cuz the sound it makes does not bug me.

Admin please help me pass this on.I have lived a very terrified life the past 12 years due to the steady distraction caused by tinnitus. I hear a steady, offensive and unending buzzing sound on my left ear, which made me deaf. I worked in a factory for 28 years and i was really much exposed to loud noise, since i retired 15 years ago i have been faced with this, infact it made me deaf. I was fortunate enough to get a medicine from Dr. Joseph that put a final stop to the sound and it has never returned since then. Most doctors might tell you there is no cure to tinnitus but as a survivor of this i will tell you it is curable. To get the medicine for yourself just reach him personally on josephalberteo@gmail.com also for advise and information too.